


Up to Your Ass in Alligators: Or, a Little Father-Son Bonding Time

by AstroGirl



Category: The Venture Bros
Genre: Bad Parenting, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 08:44:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2766911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rusty's been expecting to have this conversation for quite a while now.  He didn't expect to have it while dangling upside-down over a pit of alligators, but he supposes that's kind of stupid of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up to Your Ass in Alligators: Or, a Little Father-Son Bonding Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lintwhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lintwhite/gifts).



> This is set sometime after the season 5 finale.

Rusty's been expecting to have this conversation for quite a while now. He didn't expect to have it while dangling upside-down over a pit of alligators, but he supposes that's kind of stupid of him. He's had most of the important conversations of his life in situations like this. His father gave him the sex talk while the two of them were suspended over a pool full of killer mermaids. Well, technically, that was the sex-with-aquatic-lifeforms talk, which at the time just confused him (although it did leave him with a lifelong and mildly disturbing tendency towards arousal whenever he eats a fish dinner). But it's basically the same thing.

Then again, he hasn't really been having this sort of adventure -- or as, he tends to think of it, this sort of _annoyance_ \-- very much lately. So he figures he might as well take advantage of all this time with nothing to do but wait for Hatred to rescue them, or to fall and be devoured by alligators, to have a little father-son bonding time with the boys. Silly him.

**

"You know," he says, as the rope holding his feet sways slightly in the breeze, turning him in lazy circles above snapping, tooth-filled mouths, "My old man left me hanging above a pit of alligators for half a day once. Told me it would desensitize me to fear. It actually sort of worked." Admittedly, the first lesson he learned that day was just how messy and unpleasant it is to piss yourself upside-down. But eventually, the alligators had started to seem... boring. He still finds them boring, really, the same way he finds snakes and spiders and that death trap with the swinging blade boring. 

That was also the day he discovered that the pooling of blood in his head improves his thought processes and memory, at least up until the point where it causes him to pass out. Which might be why it suddenly occurs to him now that his last glimpse of his father before he returned hours later to declare that lesson finished involved Jonas walking away with his arm around the villain-of-the-week's very blonde, very well-endowed wife, possibly for a little alone time without a kid underfoot.

Rusty carefully shoves this memory back down where he keeps everything else he's not going to think about.

"Those aren't alligators," says Dean, condescension dripping from every syllable. "They're _crocodiles_. You can tell by the shape of the snouts. Also by the fact that we're in Africa. Where there _are_ no alligators." He glares at Rusty as they sway gently past each other.

On Rusty's other side, Hank dangles an arm down, pulling it away seconds before a pair of jaws snaps shut below him, and giggles.

"Hank," says Rusty. "Don't tease the alligators." He ignores Dean's theatrical eye roll.

"Aww, but they're fun!" says Hank. "I'm gonna name this one Snappy!" He dangles his arm down again, then, with a quick contortion of his body, pulls himself up and away from the frustrated reptile below him. One of the strands of the rope holding his feet snaps, its new loose end smacking into Rusty's face and nearly knocking his glasses off.

"Hank, if you get yourself eaten, I swear..." 

It's not the kind of threat that needs to be finished, but Dean jumps in, anyway. "You swear you'll what? Make another clone and replace him?"

"What? Who... Who told you that? I... I don't know what you're talking about!" Rusty can hear his voice stuttering and wavering, but hopefully the boys won't notice. He's pretty sure they won't. Yeah. He pulled it off. He's smooth.

"It doesn't matter," Dean mutters.

Rusty is pretty sure it _does_ matter, because when he gets out of here, he's going to have to have a little talk with whoever spilled the beans about what is and isn't appropriate subject matter for tender young ears. Then again, there are a limited number of people it can be. Maybe he can just berate them all. 

"Oh, well," he says, trying to sound unconcerned. "I suppose you had to find out sooner or later." Honestly, he's surprised they never figured it out before now. (Well, except for the times when they did and then died shortly afterward, _purely by coincidence_. But that doesn't count.) Admittedly, in Hank's case it's not too surprising. Hank was never all that bright. Rusty still remembers him as a toddler trying to fit a square-shaped peg into a star-shaped hole, pounding relentlessly on it until the little plastic pegboard finally broke open and let him shove whatever he wanted into the remains. He seemed to regard it as a victory. Dean, on the other hand... Dean's inherited at least some of Rusty's brains, even if the current bad attitude obviously comes from somewhere else.

"No thanks to you," Dean mutters, crossing his arms petulantly over his chest.

"Oh, come on. It's no more than any concerned father would do!" He buffs his fingernails on his speedsuit (which unfortunately is rather soiled and smelly at the moment) and modestly adds, "Well, any brilliant superscientist father. You two idiots hurt yourselves, and it's my job to fix it. It's no different than putting on a band aid."

"Funny," says Dean. "That's exactly what Ben said."

"Aha! It was _Ben_! Well, that's it. _Someone's_ getting an eviction notice the instant we get home." Bad enough that he'd tattled, but stealing Rusty's band aid line?! Even if it was Ben who came up with it originally, back when they first set up the cloning facilities, it's Rusty's clone lab, and Rusty's kids. It ought to be Rusty's wise fatherly explanation. Why can't the world let him have just _one_ thing?

"Well, I think it's neat!" says Hank. "Hey, Pop, does cloning give you superpowers? 'Cause I totally feel like I could wrestle one of these gators."

"They're _crocodiles_ ," says Dean.

"Sorry, son. Not unless you count premature hair loss or an increased predisposition to cancer as superpowers."

Dean lets out a heavy sigh.

"Oh, what?" says Rusty. "I was supposed to let you _die_? Permanently? That can be arranged right now, if it's what you really want." He gestures down towards the gators -- the _crocodiles_ \-- towards whatever the hell they are, and nearly gets a few fingers taken off for his trouble.

"What you were supposed to do was not _lie_ about it," says Dean.

"I never lied!" Rusty protests. "Just because I never came out and said, 'Oh, by the way, did I mention you two keep dying all over the place and I have to keep replacing you' -- at great personal inconvenience, I might add -- that does not constitute a lie."

"I think that's called a lie of omission," says Hank, helpfully. He is still smiling down at the snapping creatures below him, completely oblivious to the surprised looks his father and brother are giving him.

"Hank's right," Dean says, finally. "It makes me wonder what else you aren't telling us. Like, oh, who our mother really is?"

"Ah... Yes," says Rusty. He thinks about it for a moment. Maybe it's time to come clean about that, finally. Maybe they do deserve to know the truth. Maybe...

Rusty turns his face back towards Dean and starts to speak, but before he can quite settle on an initial syllable, he's interrupted by a _twang!_ followed quickly by a _crash!_ He whips his head around, only to get hit in the face -- _again!_ \-- by the dangling end of the rope that only a minute ago held Hank. "Oh, great," he mutters, but he's barely able to hear himself over Dean's panicky shouting of his brother's name.

There's a thrashing below them, scaly tails whipping back and forth in a frenzy. Rusty squinches his eyes shut, afraid to look. But the suspense is even worse, and a moment later he has to open them again.

A massive crocodilian head rises up out of the pit, arcing above the bodies of its fellows. Atop it, his arms wrapped around the creature's mouth and holding its jaws shut, is Hank. He lets out a whoop and thwacks his heels into the side of its neck, as if he were prodding a reluctant horse into a gallop. "I totally have superpowers!" he yells, as the crocodile scrambles atop the others' bodies, and he somersaults gracefully up and out.

"Hang on!" he calls up. "I'm gonna cut you down!"

"Right into a pit of crocodiles?" Rusty shouts back, feeling for the first time a genuine spike of fear.

"Finally," Dean mutters.

"Oh, right!" says Hank. "I mean, uh, I'm gonna pull you back up!"

Rusty twists his body back towards Dean as Hank shimmies up the tree and onto the branch they're suspended from. "You see? You see? _This_ is why I needed an illicit cloning lab just to get the two of you to something approaching adulthood. And can you imagine how many more incredibly stupid things your brother would have done if he'd known all that time he was effectively unkillable?"

Dean doesn't say anything for a moment, but Rusty can see him thinking about it. His face slumps a little, some of the surly tension draining out of it. It's kind of funny-looking, with gravity pulling the wrong way like this. "Yeah," he says finally, reluctantly. "Yeah. I guess so."

And _that_ Rusty thinks smugly as Hank hauls him up, inch by inch, by his feet, is why he is the best dad _ever.  
_


End file.
